PEKIN Ñ
Investigations began quickly Tuesday in the wake of a powerful blast that tore through the aging brick walls and roof of a chemical pressure-bottling plant and injured four workers, three seriously.

Shortly after 3 p.m., a corner of the Enviro-Safe Refrigerants plant, 100 Caroline St., blew off in the explosion that reportedly took place near an assembly line and may have stemmed from a gas line malfunction.
....
Initial investigation at the scene included the possibility of a malfunctioning gas line that, fed by an unknown ignition source, produced the explosion.

Local entrepreneur Randy Price converted the "century-old" structure into a bottling facility for his company that produces environmentally safe refrigerants in several renovated buildings in the city.

Price said it was too early Tuesday night to talk about the explosion's possible cause. He will continue working with investigators to review what security cameras in the building recorded, he said.

HIGH BRIDGE Ñ A maintenance worker at a borough manufacturing plant was hospitalized with severe injuries Thursday afternoon when a blast of pressurized oxygen knocked him off his feet, authorities said.

Police, fire and rescue personnel responding to a report of a worker injured in an explosion rushed to the Custom Alloy Corporation on Washington Avenue just after 1:30 p.m. Thursday to find the 27-year-old victim, according to police. Company officials told first responders that the man was performing maintenance on an oxygen line in the welding section of the plant, elevated about 12 to 15 feet off the ground in a lift, when a blast knocked him down onto the lift's platform.

There was no evidence indicating any ignition source or fire, but the release of pressurized gas reportedly was powerful enough to cause serious injury to the employee, whose identity was not released. The man was treated at the scene for initial effects of the gas release, which caused soot to disperse throughout the area, then transported via medical helicopter to Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, police said. A second employee also was treated at the scene for minor injuries caused by the blast.

A spill that sent 300 gallons of bleach into a storm drain was cleaned up during the weekend to avoid adverse impacts to nearby Rocky Creek.
The accident occurred Friday at the Augusta Utilities Department's Peach Orchard Road office, when a pump failed to turn off after loading 12.5 percent bleach solution from a large tank into a smaller one.
Cleanup crews added a dechlorination agent to the storm drain and flushed the area with water to push the chemical through the system, said Al-len Saxon, the department's assistant director for facility operations.
The storm drain empties into a ditch that crosses Georgia Hwy. 56 and empties into Rocky Creek, he said, but the chemical was not detectable at the Hwy. 56 crossing and no adverse impacts were observed in the creek.

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